As they sat down to supper that evening, the snow was still falling and they were silent, neither speaking to each other nor crossing paths but only sharing the same table. Libbie was decided on her course of action and that it was best for the future.
Rose, for she was old enough to have a will and full conscience of her own, sensed it was inevitable and already began to wish for the day when she would be independent and free of them. She knew the time must come, only she did not know when.
They sat there eating from yesterday’s meat and plotting each her own course, separate from the rest but compatible with her own view of the world and her place in it, and all was silent and blanketed by the snow.
As they finished their meal and began to prepare for bed, though, an awful sound such as none of them had heard before filled the room, sending shivers through each of them and making everything seem stiller than it was before.
The two youngest were afraid, and Libbie knew it was not a natural thing she had heard. Adelia alone had any idea what was happening, although she had never witnessed it but only heard of it, back before in ancient days when her own mistress, Sanne, was alive. She knew then that all was lost and beyond saving.
“It is called Ould Lowe.” She answered their unasked question. “It is an unvanquishable demon.” So say the legends.
nine
Beneath the icy surface of the lake the monster battled against his chains, as he had every day since they were first fastened around him — never ceasing to try and free himself in all the years he had been held captive by the links of iron. Rust had finally softened the shackles enough that he was able to snap one of them, like an enemy’s bones, before swimming to the surface of the water. But he was not yet free. Ice encased the top of the lake, holding him yet in his watery penitentiary. Five nights he did pound against it — and all the length of the days that circled round them — his rage increasing with each desperate knock. As he dwelled then in the refracted light of his aquarium, his memory of the years before began to be restored, like some fearsome returned king, and he knew again his former life and how he had lost his lands and came to be chained. He pushed against the ice in another fit of rage, wanting nothing more than vengeance against those who bound him there.
In the house the women heard the noise the monster made and each day grew a little less certain of what it all meant, trying to tell themselves and each other it was only the ice melting. When strangers came to the house, though, the beast was gravely silent, as if his ire was some private thing meant for them alone.
Rose had her own understanding of his bellow and was least afraid, though, she knew not what he wanted, or how to defeat him, but felt the sound was less separate from the right world than she was first told, when they claimed he was evil refined.
How information passed to the creature itself is more mysterious, but he knew of all that had happened on the land in the time he had been away, and who all everyone was. When at last his raw hand escaped the ice — pulling the rest of his massive frame after it — he was as bold and knowledgeable as he had been when he ruled there before them. He sat on the shore of the lake then, and his only thoughts were to conquer all that had displaced him from his station.
He came forth in the afternoon, letting the sun warm his cold form, and every living thing scattered from that precinct before him. When night fell he was strong again and stood to begin his haunting, letting free oaths as he went that were all the more baleful for having been unheard so long. At sunrise his second day he began a demented singing, which was a wild murderous ode of all he would do in his new reign and all the reasons to fear him.
He grew hungry after that, and spent the morning scavenging for something to fill his cravings. He was all pain and all want. The forest of his former prowling, though, was little more than a tame garden now, and the game he was used to was no longer to be found, forcing him to roam wide on the chase before he hunted down nourishment for his needs. Sated, he went back to wait on the one called Merian.
When his nemesis did not show himself by evening, Lowe grew impatient and went to go look for him, first at the old house, which was destroyed but not yet abandoned, then at the new place, where Adelia, Libbie, and the two little girls were.
Adelia had hung the place with amulets, which Lowe laughed at, but she also left a plate, which he did consume, and it was enough to satisfy him for another day. Soon, though, all his hungers would be filled but one.
He slept that night not in his bed under the lake but out in the open beneath the stars, where he dreamed and cursed in his sleep all through the night, like some wayward handmaiden of creation.
The next day he rose again, and walked the grounds again, swearing without pause. His memory was bitter long and it filled him with rage, until he began a bellowing that lasted half the morning. When it was done there was nothing living in the county that did not know Ould Lowe was returned, and intended to have back his place in the cosmos there, which the man had tried to overthrow. He had never done harm to anyone who left him undisturbed, but all who tangled with him learned ultimately to know defeat and isolation — which is the feeling men were said to have before Lowe stopped their knowing anything else at all — and he longed to bring such knowing loss to the man.
He stood outside and began to call out the man’s name, which was all of their name as well.
It was only when Waylon came for a visit that he gave them a moment of peace that day. But when Waylon left in the late afternoon he was also accosted by the beast, who knew then his intent and called him after that everything but man, driving him off in such a violent manner that he knew it was better not to return, no matter what else it might be worth to him. Libbie suggested then that they leave Stonehouses and move to town but Adelia refused, and despite whatever rancor was between them Libbie was fearful of making the journey with the girls alone.
He now had focus for all his wicked intents and walked by the door of the house constantly, hoping they might venture out, but neither they nor the man showed themselves.
On the fifth day of his resurgence Lowe started to grow desperate for his purpose. What he did then was surprising, but it was to cry tears hot with self-pity — for he wanted only one thing and it was denied him. The sound that emanated from him, however, was such that no one would have thought it crying, yet another verse of his foul hell song.
The next day the cattle began to fall down dead, certain as if pestilence had been unleashed among them. In the same manner they had taken over all that was his, he reasoned, surrounding his name and memory with silence, brought on by guilt fastened around their tongues when they thought of him.
He walked the shores of the lake and he named out all their names in the valley and hill country to show how intimately he knew them, but they too hid themselves from him, like Adam, instead of being as all the ones who would be lord before that who did say, naked and baldly, “I usurp Thee.”
“What have we done?” Rose asked behind the door, thinking it punishment for some crime.
“We have done nothing,” Adelia answered her. “The monster Lowe claims all and does its evil work, as it is wont.”
“My father will kill it,” Rose reasoned calmly.
Adelia smiled at her, and was eased a little in her worries by the girl’s ignorant words. If man could face it she knew Caleum would, but he was not there and it was known the fiend he could not be defeated. The demon himself was first to know of the man’s return, smelling him when he was still far off from Berkeley and did not yet know what had happened to his home. To give him fair warning, or because it was his nature and he could not control it, he started singing his hell song again, which curdled the blood of everyone in the country but especially those few with memory old enough to remember it from other days.